International Journal of Communication 12(2018), 4379–4400 1932–8036/20180005 Mongolia’s 2015 Referendum via Text Messaging: Engaging Rural and Nomadic Citizens in Public Screen Deliberation ALLISON HAHN Baruch College, City University of New York, USA How can emergent democracies engage rural and mobile citizens in deliberative democracy? This article analyzes the ways that Mongolia’s two national referenda, the 1945 vote for independence and the 2015 referendum on mining contracts, attempted to engage pastoral-nomadic citizens in national deliberations via a public screen. The analysis is prefaced by an examination of public political deliberation and the role of referenda in both settled and emergent democracies. This is followed by an assessment of Mongolia’s ICT development, which enabled the 2015 referendum to be held via short message service text messages and deliberated about over Twitter. I conclude that, although the 2015 referendum did not result in a clear policy mandate, the method of using text messaging to distribute a national referendum shows great promise as a way to reach and engage even the most rural and mobile citizens. Keywords: Mongolia, public sphere, public screen, democratization, referendum, pastoral nomads This study examines the use and implications of cellular phones in the political deliberations of rural and pastoral-nomadic herders in Mongolia. By focusing on Mongolia, a nation of 3 million people and 3.2 million active mobile subscribers, I ask how cellular phones may enable new deliberative spaces in emergent democracies. Although many civil society scholars and activists have promoted new and social media as a way to broaden the public sphere in highly developed societies (Bijker, 2006; Gastil, 2008; Pfister & Godana, 2012), little research has examined the structural configuration of interactions and transactions facilitated by new and social media in rural and developing democracies such as Mongolia (Dalaibuyan, 2013; Tencic, 2015). My analysis begins with the role of public political argument and deliberative technologies in established and emergent democracies. Referenda are seen as a tool both to draw citizens into deliberations and for politicians to declare that a political topic has been decided. Then I conduct a comparative case study of Mongolia’s two national referenda, occurring in 1945 and 2015. Although much time passed between these referenda, and the format of the referenda differ, I argue that a comparison of these events illustrates the ways that rural and mobile communities have been engaged in national decision making. Drawing from the reports of government officials, national media, international observers, and, in the case Allison Hahn: [email protected] Date submitted: 2016–07–31 Copyright © 2018 (Allison Hahn). Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at http://ijoc.org. 4380 Allison Hahn International Journal of Communication 12(2018) of the 2015 referendum, Mongolian deliberation via Twitter, I examine questions of national and international referendum validity to understand how national referenda can encourage or foreclose public deliberation. A qualitative analysis of tweets posted during the 2015 referendum is used to explore the reasons for citizen participation in and rejection of the 2015 referendum. The article concludes with and examination of the technological and democratic entanglements in holding a national referendum by short message service (SMS). Public Political Argument Zarefsky’s (2009) work concerning public political argument assesses topics that are necessarily public, and for which it seems that a debate will continue for a long period of time. He contends that long- term debate is advantageous, but government agents will at times attempt to artificially constrict public debate in ways that consolidate governmental power. For example, citizens may want to take more time to study and debate a political topic, while a politician facing an election may desire an immediate vote. In this study of Mongolia, I examine the ways that politicians have attempted to foreclose long-standing deliberations in two cases: the 1945 referendum on independence and the 2015 referendum on mining policy. At first glance, each case seems to be a singular question of whether the nation should or should not act; however, argument scholars such as Mohammed (2016) indicate that public political arguments are often multipurposive activity types (p. 221), meaning that the officials who call for a vote, and the citizens who engage in deliberation and voting, are participating in a diversity of argumentative exchanges and outcomes. In the 1945 referendum, many citizens had already determined that Mongolia was and should be independent. Holding the referendum signaled Mongolia’s decision to be independent from China, worked to define Mongolian national unity, and smoothed relations between China and the Soviet Union. The situation was very different in 2015, when Prime Minister Saikhanbileg declared that Mongolians must decide whether they would sign or reject a mining contract with Oyu Tolgoi. Although members of the government and international mining corporations may have been ready to sign a contract, this article demonstrates that the public had not yet reached a consensus. Undecided Mongolian voters voiced a plethora of opinions during the 2015 referendum. This heterogeneous group of citizens was separated by both their different opinions and different starting points in the debate over mineral policy. Some voters had long-term interests in Mongolian mineral rights, while others only entered the debate when they received the government’s text-message referendum. This means that their engagement in this public argument meant different things for different participants. As a result, Mongolian voters did not reach the cohesive decision desired by the government but instead demonstrated the heterogeneous public commonly found in situations of dissensus (Zarefsky, 2009 p. 118). Evidence of the Mongolian voting public’s dissensus was found through new and social media such as Twitter. As DeLuca and Peeples (2002) argue, public screens encourage a shift from rationality and consensus to publicity, distraction, and dissent (p. 125). In the second part of this article, I follow the argument of DeLuca, Lawson, and Sun (2012), that public screens have changed the methods and production of political deliberation and activism, and analyze the ways that Mongolians used Twitter to respond to the referendum during and immediately following the vote. To understand how this shift from International Journal of Communication 12(2018) Mongolia’s 2015 Referendum 4381 public spheres to public screens has affected Mongolia, I juxtapose the 1945 and 2015 referenda. This juxtaposition highlights the ways that social media has allowed Mongolians to move beyond the constraints of older media. In studying how Mongolians approached, deliberated about, participated in, and responded to the national referenda of 1945 and 2015, I aim to better understand political deliberations in emergent democracies. This is important for scholars who are interested in Mongolia or other emergent or rural democracies that may also experiment with SMS referenda. For readers from more established democracies, particularly Western democracies, I point to Zarefsky’s (1992) “Spectator Politics,” in which he reminds readers of the irony that Western political deliberators have become “couch potatoes” (p. 413) while emergent democracies such as Mongolia are experimenting with direct political deliberation. He suggests that by studying distant democracies, Western scholars might realize how truncated their public spaces have become and search for emancipatory methods for revitalizing public sphere deliberations. This analysis begins with an overview of the role of referenda in both Western-style and emergent democracies. Then, utilizing a close reading of archival documents alongside social media posts, I examine Mongolia’s 1945 and 2015 referenda. I compare the two referenda by presenting the reason for holding a vote, the political milieu at the time of the vote, voter participation, international reports, and vote outcome. To understand the use of Twitter during the 2015 referendum, I apply qualitative analysis and clustered argumentative groups. After examining each referendum separately, I compare the events to understand both the long-term effect of each referendum and the ways that contemporary Mongolian political deliberation can inform international democratization efforts. Referenda Referenda have been studied in Canada (Lea, 2006), Denmark (de Vreese & Semetko, 2004), England (Burnap, Gibson, Sloan, Southern, & William, 2015; Qvortrup, 2006), the European Union (Fossum & Menéndez, 2005), New Zealand (Aimer & Miller, 2002), the United States (Gastil, 2008) and U.S. territories such as Guam (Na’puti & Hahn, 2013). These studies address a range of questions from local policy to national independence. In each instance, scholars emphasize the need for quality public participation and debate before calling for a vote (Gutmann & Thompson, 2004). In many nations, voters have been excluded from these deliberations due to their gender identity, race, or political status (Gastil, 2008). Yet, because these referenda have occurred in long-standing democracies, scholars are able to assume that many of the voters have experience with a democratic system